Dear LRI Supporter,

As you know, we’ve been giving seed money to bold and fresh ideas in lupus research for several years.

And now there’s no question: it’s happening. The field of lupus research is percolating with potential solutions and safer treatments.

One sign: LRI discoveries have led to $60 million for new lupus research at the National Institutes of Health and other places—double the $30 million we leveraged there last year!

Some of the best ideas, and the best minds, are trained on lupus.

One of them is Dr. Chander Raman at the University of Alabama in Birmingham.

Early this Fall he called to tell us he’d won $1.8 million from the National Institutes of Health to further explore an approach to shutting off the over-reactive immune system of lupus.

We’d originally given him $300,000 to tinker with the molecule, CD5, that he proposed might reprogram the immune system by sounding the death knell for auto-reactive B cells. We raised that seed money with help from people like you, and then gave it to him.

As it turns out, Dr. Raman was on to something big, and is now doing explorations that may help not only in treating lupus, but other illnesses as well, such as MS and rheumatoid arthritis.

“There is no way this NIH grant would have happened without the
Lupus Research Institute.” – Chander Raman, PhD

Around the same time, Dr. Eric Greidinger at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine emailed to let us know that he’d won $650,000 from the Veterans Administration—to build upon a novel idea about predicting lupus organ damage that we’d initially supported.

What did he do that was so smart? He built a special model that could assess the potential of the immune system’s “danger signal” sensors to indicate which organs and tissues in lupus might soon get attacked.

We keep hearing these incredible success stories—and take such hope in knowing that they all move us closer to better medicines for Brittany with lupus in Montgomery, less invasive tests for Jacob in Dallas, ways to help Amanda, who has lupus, have the energy to go to college in Orlando.

With every dollar you give—$25, $50, $100—we promise to keep it happening!

About the LRI
The nation’s only nonprofit singularly dedicated to novel research in lupus, we champion innovation and scientific risk-taking in the hunt for solutions to this complex and dangerous autoimmune disease.